graham’s blog

Geneva Roundup

 The main story of these past few days is that following on from a surprising popular vote just over a week ago, our local government - who is also my employer - has passed a law banning smoking in the vast majority of public spaces from the 1st of July this year.

I don’t think I mentioned the results of the vote but more than 55% of the population voted and almost 80% approving banning smoking in public spaces.

The government’s buildings are smoke-free since the 2nd of January this year and the general ban on smoking enters into force in the same year. It’s almost too good to be true.

I’m an intolerant ex-smoker and smoked almost two packs a day before giving up 25 years ago. I’m looking forward to going into restaurants and bars that were previously too smoke-filled for me.

I’m very pleased.

Two other pieces of news :

• The Geneva Motor Show will start in a few days time and Geneva will live the effervescence of the event as usual. Don’t plan to visit over the next ten days as the hotels are all booked up.
• Geneva will be recycling some of Naples waste (180,000 tonnes of it) in our incineration plants.

Tags: local, opinion

Goodbye Facebook

I might be becoming a social outcast but I’ve done something that I’ve been thinking of doing for some time now.

I logged into Facebook, restricted as much as possible who can see what, uninstalled every application I could find, erased as much as possible my profile and then deactivated my account. I didn’t have the possibility of deleting my account or I would have.

I’ve never got into it properly, and it’s too much of a distraction, as my online life is nicely disorganised elsewhere and I have no intention of turning Facebook into my social hub.

I’ll just have to get by elsewhere.

Let’s see how this pans out and whether I’ll get any fallout from it. In the meantime you are welcome to leave comments on my blog, follow me on twitter and tumblr (justgraham), or email me.

Tags: opinion

Awash in the social app sea

I read an interesting post by Megan Berry this morning called “when worlds collide”.

She was musing over the fact that some Facebook users are worried over the collision between private and business profiles. She says :

“As a Facebook “expert” I get asked: “what Facebook apps do you use?” “why not just email instead of using Facebook messages?” I do my best to answer and sometimes wonder just what it is about Facebook that has so captured the minds of numerous thirty-somethings.

For this generation of thirty-something web users much of their business marketability has come from being web-literate, young, and in touch with the latest Internet trends. As a new generation joins the work force who is younger and learned to use a computer before they learned how to ride a bike the value of the thirty-somethings is slowly changing from youth and knowledge of current trends to experience. I suspect that many who try to join Facebook to prove their youth are instead finding that it makes them feel old.”

If the thirty-somethings are supposed to be feeling old where does that leave me and those in my age group? Do we fifty-somethings have somewhere nice to go on the web? Are there social apps geared toward us hidden somewhere? Is age a problem?

That got me to thinking that during the preparation of my daughter Jennifer’s wedding we spent some time with two of her friends that will be getting married in a few weeks time. They are a wonderful couple and we spent a few really nice evenings with them.

I remember saying in my wedding speech, while thanking them for their contribution, that only a few decades separated us from a great friendship.

Generations don’t mix easily in the real world and it would seem that they don’t fare much better online.

Tags: opinion, social, social apps, Web 2.0

Software is socially ineffective

I have been working in IT for over 15 years and through that time software has always been seen as being effective in solving business and real life problems.

There is however a dimension that has been sorely neglected and that is organizational and social structures and human psychology. If you look at this as a triangle it makes sense. The bottom third is the technological infrastructure, the middle layer is the functional features whereas the top third, the cone, is users and usability. So initially software was chosen on it’s technical merits and then functional matrixes were elaborated to make sure that software was functionally rich.

We can see this in the evolution of products such as Microsoft Word. Initially it had to work albeit with a minimal function set. Then it evolved into a functionally (too?) rich product. The problem was that not many used a significant portion of these functions but many complained that although rich in functions it wasn’t particularly “usable”. The latest version therefore is functionally very similar but a vast effort has been made to make it more usable (or at least more visibly attractive).

I could expand on this but the point of this post is really to highlight a problem.

My work description leads me to promote collaboration in my organization. My employers are obsessed (in a way very rightly so) about the technical infrastructure, standards and frameworks. On it’s own this leads to very frustrating, functionally poor and unusable software packages that are almost always rejected.

It was then decided to create and test software on a functional matrix using real world tasks and problems to “functionally fit” the software to the organizational needs.

The problem of course is that if the software is not given usability tests by focus groups or future users we inevitably end up with software that is technically excellent, functionally rich but users don’t want to approach it let alone actually use it.

Good software then needs a holistic approach with all three considerations factored in.

There is however a further problem that needs to be solved or at least considered.

Human psychology and sociology is independent of software.

Unfortunately, you can give the best collaborative software available to users but if they are not collaborative in nature or if the organization is structured and organized to impeach or hinder collaboration. The software will fail.

This is why, in my opinion, that the organization needs to be stimulated by management through structure, processes and education to become collaborative in nature precociously before or during the introduction of collaborative software.

This brings me to my last point in this post. I am not really a social animal at heart. I suck at polite conversation and social skills although to balance this I love meaningful conversations and real discussions so I’m not a social outcast either.

The Web 2.0 is here and with it we can all join in. I blog here (and elsewhere), I have a flickr account, I partake in de.lic.ious, Facebook, MySpace, Netvibes, Last.fm, Twitter, Pownce, Picassa, StumbleUpon, MSN, Gtalk, Digg, etc etc

Has this made me any more “social”. I fear not. What I remark the most that most of my friends are on most if not all of the aforementioned “networks.” What we need is training in social skills because mine sometimes are spread very thinly and I sometimes wonder if I would happier signing up for less new things and concentrating on existing ones (like this blog for instance ;-).)

I’ll leave it there for today.

Tags: education, General, information, opinion, social, studies, Web 2.0

Annoying article in the local press

I read one of those articles that never cease to annoy me. Along the lines of a big announce either for something that “might” happen one day or of something that will only happen much later on.

This mornings article proclaims that we will no longer be inconvenienced by noisy garden machines such as lawnmowers and leaf blowers. The new law will come into effect on the first of July … in two weeks.

But :

• It doesn’t apply to existing machines
• It will only apply to machines bought after the 1st of January 2010

Our lawnmower is already 7 years old and most lawnmowers last at least 10 years. I get the feeling that the law won’t really have any effect until 2020…

This then is distinctly in the “This is not real news” category.

Tags: information, opinion

Rattled

Well actually I’m a little bit pissed off by something I read a few minutes ago.

I have both British and Swiss passports. Both countries have accorded me the right to travel and would offer me some form protection at their embassies and consulates when I am travelling. If I was a known criminal my passport would be withdrawn and I couldn’t travel.

Some countries even afford me the right to visit their countries without applying for a visa. They trust the judgement of those that accorded me a passport.

Apparently if I want to visit a country that will remain nameless (but I know you are intelligent people) that although I don’t need a visa they will require me to make an application 48 hours before travelling through a website that will put me through a lot of hoops and ask a whole load questions that I won’t feel like answering.

You might say “Well if you don’t want to do it, don’t visit.”

That’s what I conclude too, right now and on the spur of the moment.

I sincerely hope that all governments do exactly the same thing and then we can just make the most of it where we are and get on with our lives. What good does travel do anyway? We can always build walls, turn off the TV, power down the networks and head back to the caves.

If you treat people like undesireable monsters you turn them into the very monsters you are trying to avoid.

Tags: asides, countries, opinion

Shift happens

My very good friend Nils sent me the link to this presentation and I thought I would share it with you this morning.

Tags: countries, information, opinion, presentation, slideshow

Surveillance cameras

I am following the debate on surveillance cameras in the press. I remember a while back that the French are testing cameras that detect road traffic offenses but haven’t gone as far as their English counterparts who also detect Insurance and licensing fraud.

What puts the system well apart from other surveillance systems is the software that drives it. Image recognition scans the numberplates and compares them with a national database. From looking at some British Television documentary footage I notice that in suburban areas, the police can follow suspects through video camera use.

Our local Geneva Government announced yesterday that they were planning on installing 46 cameras in public places and one of the excuses is increased surveillance of the Euro2008 football matches that will be played in Geneva next year. There are already a significant number of cameras in use but these are visible on road junctions and are used for watching road traffic.

I get the feeling that citizens imagine that there are “video walls” depending on human vision and alert of problems. I don’t think that people realize the sophistication of modern computerized surveillance systems. I am going to be following the debate closely over the next few months.

Personally I don’t do anything in public that would attract attention so I’m not worried from that point of view. What does worry me however is audio surveillance where computerized high performance microphones looks for keywords in conversations.

The last time you were walking in public with your spouse or friend are you sure that something you said or a comment you made about someone or something couldn’t be misinterpreted if taken out of context? Think about that for a moment.

Links :

• The voice of Big Brother (pdf)
• A Comparison of the Impact of Protective and Preservative Video Surveillance systems (pdf)

Tags: countries, driving, france, local, opinion, transport

Cleaning up

Well here we are in February already and without having made the slightest New Year’s Resolution I managed to post on every single day last month. Yay for me!

I also tried quite a lot of things here too. Twitter, MyBlogLines, The Flickr widget, Snap and CoComment.

MyBloglines sits quietly in the sidebar. It would be useful if you would sign up as I would notice your little icon each time you visited. If nobody does it will have to go but I’m in no hurry. Twitter is a good idea and enables you to Instant Message (or use a text message from your mobile if you are in the USA) to say what you are up to. The problem with me is that I don’t seem to be living a very exciting life and I’m painfully aware that Twittering it just highlights the sleep, eat, work and play life that I live. I like my life, a lot actually, but unless I can twitter something interesting there doesn’t seem to be any point in keeping it. The Flickr widget is cool and apart from eating some bandwidth I love it.

CoComment is cool but would be useful if I made a lot of comments “everywhere” there doesn’t seem to be a lot of point in commenting on my favorite blogs whose authors get a rerun when they come here. I think it’s more useful for those that spend a lot of time commenting. At this present time my commenting is on a par with the number of visitors I get. Discrete

Then there is Snap. This is what displays those little pop-ups over links to external pages. The idea is to give you some information, either to promote the link visually or indicate that it *isn’t* interesting. Tjis is not always obvious from the link text.

I came across a Digg article today with a lot of angry comments on this app.

Snap’s preview anywhere gizmo is ruining the reading experience for millions of people. Its intrusive, obstructive and unuseful in almost every respect and use case. The fact that so many big blogs are using it, big well respected blogs, does not mean that it’s useful, it just means that they, like most bloggers, have all the self restraint of a magpie in a sparkly things factory.

The Download Squad also has an article saying that Snap’s preview is obnoxious (and there’s a word I haven’t heard for a while)

Before I take it out would you care to comment ?

With all that in mind I am disabling most of this new stuff. Luckily my template (K2) handles sidebar widgets elegantly so all I have to do is disable them for now.

By the way, my earlier post on SharpCast has persuaded me to put the widget on a separate page and I plan on doing that real soon now!

Tags: opinion

Social Reproduction

Thamus left an interesting comment on one of yesterdays posts. I do read with pleasure any comment left but I’m also curious and as I didn’t know what the term “Social Reproduction” meant I researched it a little.

Reproduction is used in a number of ways in sociology. In each of the uses, it means the replacement of people or structures with a new set similar to the original, such that the social system can continue. A basic definition of reproduction is “producing again” or “making a copy.” Reproduction in the Oxford English Dictionary is the “Action or process of forming, creating, or bringing into existence again. (linked article)

I’m now, quite frankly, out of my depth, but here is an interesting extract from another paper on Social and Capitalistic Reproduction (The Perpetual Wheel, Ebin Lee Warner)

In today’s capitalism, society reproduces an admiring of people who are successful in order to feed off other’s need for that success. “we (society) will continue to rely upon the apparently unequivocal failures of others for reassurance that we ourselves have not failed; and consequently we will make policy choices and continue practices which, contrary to their ostensible remedial purposes, actually function to sustain those social problems which spawn the illusion of massive failure in others” [Lewis 155]. But it is capitalism itself that breads this illusion within society not the individual. “The capitalist controlled culture industry - from ads to news, from portraying the good life to tragic lives - is one of the major sources of the production of many people’s knowledge of nation, of nature/environment, of social norms and political issues, of leisure time and sports activity, of radicalized relations and people’s in other nations, of sexuality and gender, of all manner of things, commodities and role models that are presented, e.g., “to be desired”/consumed” [Adler 6]. Capitalism controls itself. It dictates what will be desired and then sells those desired goods to itself. The one whom owns your means of production, owns you; they dictate what you want, what your children what. This allows capitalism to grow and expand even more.

Thanks to Thamus I learnt something and that’s a good thing. I’ve never had the time to study Sociology or Philosophy but they are subjects that have always interested me. Maybe I should enroll on a course, not for an academic purpose but just for personal enrichment.

Tags: opinion